It’s been an awful long time since we have written anything on this site. For my own reasons, I have been unable to attend any games and I have had no articles submitted to the website so I guess it is starting to look like abandonware.

Anyhoo, I feel self important enough to make a State of the Union address here and now seems like the right time to make it.

Dropping to the Conference is a disaster, but we can not let this turn in to a tragedy. It has been very clear that whoever is making the decisions about on and off field stuff related to Bristol Rovers, outside of the new stadium, is making a complete fuck up of it and has been for some time. The managerial appointments, the player recruitment, the sponsorship deals all seem like the efforts of a drunken village hall association. Young players are breaking in to the team, having their heads turned and basically pissing away a career in professional football or being poached by greedy Premiership clubs. Journeymen are taking the piss out of the fans and managers are being undermined by the board. There is something rotten in the State of Denmark.

The good news is the Stadium. But here is the point. The current custodians MUST deliver the stadium. They must deliver. Any failure or delay to this project now will kill the club. Without a doubt, stone dead.

I said “current custodians”. While I don’t have a massive axe to grind against the directors, I still believe they do their best. It is also clear that they are responsible for dragging the club down and running it in a massively incompetent way. It has been my view for some time that the club needs a paid full-time Chief Executive responsible for making all commercial decisions. The entire shitehouse needs a massive rocket up it’s arse. An outsider needs to come in and reorganise *everything* with a view to grow the club. Today’s panic board meeting will probably result in redundancies for good people. But they must not kill the club with cuts. They need to rationalise a few things maybe, but someone with energy, vision and good economic business sense needs to start running the club as as a business on a day to day basis. A vibrant progressive off field attitude will attract new shareholders and the club can then start to grow.

On the field, well frankly that can follow. A good manager should be able to get in the best Conference players. It’s freaking obvious that the club needs two strikers that can score 50 goals between them and these players are not in the club at the moment and the players that are are blunt or injured and can go along with anyone else that doesn’t want to be here.

Hopefully Conference football will be cheaper and I will be able to afford to go again. Some hope. Add to this the FA bullshit about allowing B teams to compete at this level and the disaster of relegation just gets worse. Any hopes we have of growing our own talent will mean Premiershit spies will steal it from us much more quickly at this level.

With Premier League and La Liga players earning fricking millions for kicking and heading a ball, there must be one of them stupid/vain enough to want to do a Roy of The Rovers stunt and take over a lower league team and bring all his friends in and bankroll them to the Premier League.

It was all sunshine and relaxation in the Birkbeck’s back garden, as a few more than five thousand gathered for an end-of-season friendly that didn’t mean much to either side. The Gasheads were, as usual, there in numbers but also in particularly fine voice. The away stand is an old-fashioned one with pillars and a […]